IT WILL BE A LONG ANSWER BUT U WILL SURELY ENJOY IT, HAVE PATIENCE TILL LAST

Normally there are two kinds of problems that prevail

1 CREATED BY YOURSELF

These kind of problem arise due to our own actions I. E

1.1 Carelessness (U didn't study properly even though U had time and money and wasted your time in B. TECH and letter on suffered when passed out from college either in job or in preparation of any exam)

1.2 Disbelief (I can't do even though U would have done the task but later on repented on your deeds)

1.3 Blind faith and affection for someone and ruined yourself for the same person but got cheated at end.

2 GIFTED BY ALLMIGHTY

Now consider following cases

1 U are general and financially very weak.

2 Your father doesn't earn much say 30000 per month by running a small coaching.

3 U don't have any elder brother or anyone to support your family except U and your father.

4 Your parents are not that much healthy and need medication.

5 Your father has to pay bank loan which he took during your sisters marriage and that too rs 12000 per month for next 3–4 years.

6 No-one in your family is that educated to guide you and your uncle goes to field to plough the field himself to save the labour cost.

7 When it rains the house U live in gets seeped from every corner and your house even don't have T.V because it will cost some money at these places when other tasks are remaining.

8 Your mother don't have any mobile but luckily your father have a simple Nokia mobile (snake game wala black and white)

9 No mode of transport except your feet or public transport.

10 The sorrounding in which you live is full of illiterate and uncivilized people I. E a small city in eastern U. P,( U can google demographic and educational status of eastern U. P. )

11 Your father has self respect even in this condition and never asks for anything from anyone, he spends what he earns with his own hands and teaches poor students free of cost(not like coachings in DELHI) ,and teaches from morning 6 to night 8 pm so that he can earn whatever possible to live a life of dignity and self respect.

12 Relatives whom your father helped in their bad time never asks your family but make fun of your poverty and big dreams.

Now tell me what more difficult condition can be paved in front of you, my parents never pressurised me for anything, they provided me best quality education which they could and my mother always used to say “MERA LADKA EK DIN CHIEF ENGINEER BAN JAYE AUR HAMARE GHAR BHI EK GADI HO JATI" on seeing some well off officers and other rich people although SHE never knew how hard is to become a CHIEF ENGINEER FOR A FINANCIAL WEAK GENERAL STUDENT.

My father always used to say I can do anything for your studies, U don't bother about family condition U just study.

I saw all these things from very beginning and as it is said GOD gives great thoughts in you only when he wants something great of U, U can't do anything good until unless your brain is able to distinguish between right and wrong.

I was determined to work hard and achieve something great to fulfill my parents dream but there always remained a sense of disbelief in me how can I effort costly coachings for IIT,AIEEE etc and compete in this condition only fighting on myself without any support of coaching etc.

Luckily one of my elders told me about house of a person who lived some 500 m away from my house and he was financially very poor (his father was in irrigation department in group D) and used to ride bicycle which was in so pathetic condition that people used to realise by the noise it used to make from 100 m away also,the person is known as SUJEET KUMAR SHUKLA, let me tell you about his achievements and see his picture first

1 Studied in U. P state board school in my district from childhood till class 12th and was one of the toppers in class 12th U. P BOARD EXAMS 2005 ,secured 86 percent marks where scoring 60 percent was uphill task in those days.

2 Was very poor to effort coaching fees so studied on his own to secure AIR 91 in IIT JEE 2006

3 cleared AIEEE with AIR 55

4 UPTU STATE RANK 3

All this he did living in a small room and studying in lantern without any help.

5 Branch topper IIT DELHI

6 cleared GATE with AIR 1

7 topped in his research thesis in CALTECH USA

8 Now he is professor of theoretical physics in university of Washington.

I met him in 2010 when I was in my +1 and he told me nothing is impossible and U can achieve anything if U wish for the need is only to hardwork. Even today I talk to him, he is very hardworking even now.

This incident shackled me for forever, I decided that I shall do anything to achieve something great in my life and my motive was to work hard and give my 100 percent what so ever condition is.

Cleared AIEEE with self study did my B. tech from NIT HAMIRPUR.

Even though I was financially weak but I never took merit cum means scholarship(my rank was 6 in class and top among outsiders) because my father said that if somehow I can pay your fees why to take that let some more needy candidates take that, I was surprised to see the millioners students whose parents were not in govt job used to make false income certificate and take scholarships for being OBC or SC ST.

Only earning money may give U external happiness but earning respect gives U internal happiness which lasts forever, so after completing my B. tech from NIT HAMIRPUR I decided to appear for ESE because I wanted that my parents should keep their head high in society but again same problem came I. E money. Now from here my real hardships began as I graduated from NITH in 2016 and my sister got married in 2014 ,my father took loan from bank and he had no bank balance with him and had to pay my coaching fees.

ESE 2017

When I went to iesm to take coaching (first time in my life for any exam) I was unable to fill it's form by seeing the fees of RS 73000 and came back and asked my father to return back home and I shall study from home itself by purchasing Iesm material only.

My father opened the bag and said he had brought money no need to worry(he still hasn't tell me from where he brought those) and asked me to study well and do my work instead thinking of these issues. I took following pledge from that day itself

1 My only aim will be study and if I do anything apart from it I shall be cheating my parents wishes and hence will not get a place in hell even.

2 I shall not miss any class and will sit in front to note down each and every point told in class.

3 Shall never have backlogs and will complete task on time even though I had to remain awake whole night.

4 I took permission from KANCHAN SIR to join other batches so in September I used to go from my room at 7:30 morning and return by 10:30 night after attending all the three batches I. E morning 8–12 am,afternoon 1–5 pm.evening 5:30 to 10 pm (I used to eat some apple or fruits kept in my bag in afternoon). When I used to reach room I was unable to stand due to my physical and mental retardation in these 15 hours and somehow eat and sleep, and next day same thing started.

5 Somehow I completed syllabus by November 2017 by running hear and there.

6 From November I started to sit in room and was coming out only for giving tests of iesm prelim, rest 6 days used to pass with me and my books along with a 7 watt LED BULB in a small room in which U can't put table chair and bed together, U have to decide what is your preference I preferred table chair and used to sleep on floor.

7 I studied and gave my best and scored well in prelims 2017( 242) and passed prelims.

8 Since in 2017 we have only 3 months for mains and everything was new to me I and one of my friend used to get mad that what to do to solve such lengthy questions of structures, fluid, hydraulic machine. But somehow I finished previous year papers and iesm booklet and was feeling confident for mains 2017.

But just 3 days before mains on 14 may 2017 I had intense headache due to excessive summer heat and I was unable to even sit properly that was the magnitude of pain, I saw my whole hardwork going away in front of my eyes, I tried my best but was unable to recover and at exam day gave exam by eating some pills but they didn't work and somehow wrote mains, attempted (150 in P1 and 230 in P2) to fetch 121 +166.

Luckily since my prelims score was good I qualified for intreviews, everyone in my family was excited that now there hardships will end but I felt sorry towards them as I knew it was impossible for me to clear the ever increasing cutoff of general category but I can't tell them real situation I thought let them be happy for some time as most of the time my father and mother use to be in distress due to poverty, health issues etc.

If I would have been from some other category I would have been qualified last year itself but we live in some other world where poverty and hunger is considered to be more privileged than caste. My score was 633 and U can see the last year allocation where people getting much lesser marks than me are writing their strategies on HOW TO CLEAR ESE but it took me another 1 painful year to answer this question by scoring 810 marks this year inspite of the hardships which I have undergone is much more than many of these people.

ESE 2018

The day on which results of ESE 2017 were announced was 11 September 2017,everyone in my family was praying for me and was quite happy that I shall become an officer now and our living standard will improve but I was rejected by UPSC, I didn't have the courage to tell my parents and call them about my results,I was not sad about all hard work which I did to reach up-to hear ended without any fruits but was much more worried about what will happen to those innocent people who have thrown their whole trust on me and what will happen afterwards.

I thought to procrastinate the results as far as possible but the society is full of people who always get happy on seeing someone sad, so few well wishers of mine when got confirmed that I am out (by seeing the final result) started to call at my home just to have fun that these small people thought so much of themselves .

My parents called me next morning to ask what happened, I didn't have the courage to reply I said “Result dekh ke batata hun" even though I knew the result previous night, I messaged my sister somehow “Didi nahi hua",my sister said “Nahi babu dekho Ho gaya hoga tum itni mehnat karte Ho tumahra nahi hoga to kiska hoga". I couldn't reply anything on it. My mother started to weep on phone itself, I cutted the phone and saved my name in my mobile “V. N. P AIR UNDER 10 ESE 2018”,went to temple to pray GOD to give me and my parents courage to start my new journey suddenly I don't know how the temple priest said “Koi bat nahi beta is bar ho jayga bas mehnat karo" I was abacked that how he knew for what I am asking ALL MIGHTY as I don't believe much on these things I believe in ALL MIGHTY but kalyugi babas are hard to trust so I worship GOD in my way (even though my mother respect and pays homage to each and every baba who comes to my home) and I never saw that person again in my life inspite of I had visited that LORD SHIVA TEMPLE IN KATWARIYA SARAI a number of times but I never saw him again even I went to give him money after my selection but he was not there nor anyone was able to tell me about that person.Lets come back to the point.

I decided following things after my rejection in September

1 I shall now give my mains exam in some other near place except DELHI so I choose CHANDIGARH as it was the Delhi summer which ate my all efforts previously.

2 I shall never miss any test series of prelims as well as mains.

3 I shall remain away from lime light as far as possible,and gave test series with changed name I. E DHRUV KUMAR and this thing I want to suggest you all, work in silence and let your success speak, U will get nothing if whole INDIA says you topper but UPSC rejects you, My parents never told anyone that I am preparing again and people taunted on us “chale the ies banane".I heard all these things but neglected these comments of foolish people.

4 I used to wake up at 12 am and used to study continuously till 8 pm(yes continuously 8 hours without eating anything) ,at 8 pm I used to leave my chair and took bath had my dinner and then again from 10 pm to 4 am so in this way I used to study 12–14 hours from September to my prelims.

5 As joining coaching again was not a need for me (and if needed even it was impossible to give fees, somehow I was able to negotiate my landlord as well as khana Wala to pay them as and when my father give money but they were good people and never forced me to pay room rent on time, from September 2017 to September 2018 maximum amount in my account was varying from rs 0 to rs 1000 for my pocket expenditure,as my father used to get some fees he used to segregate the money on which task this money will go and then if feasible put in my account) As I rarely used to come out from my room for any purpose except giving test series on Saturday and Sunday so my pocket expenditure was quite less.

6 Ate dal and roti only left eating rice because when you take more carbohydrates U feel lethargic and will feel sleepy as doing anything apart from studying was a sin for me so I controlled my other activities up-to 100 percent.

7 I used to bath daily with cold water even in winters so that I may remain fresh and don't fell sleepy while studying (these things may seem unwordly but when you are in need of something you automatically start doing these things)

8 When I used to sleep only formulae and numericals were revolving at back of my mind.

I am attaching my few prelims test series results here just see the marks and rank of person named DHRUV KUMAR because this was my changed name. U can see the roll number CECPTS18010150

Like this I scored top 10 ranks in 15 test of iesm prelims conducted out of total 25.

I got 290 marks in prelims after checking from coaching keys and at the end scored 285 in prelims from UPSC.I looked like some saint which has nothing to do with this external world except his desired goal

MAINS

I fallowed the same routine of my studying because the biggest gamble of mains was remaining and I didn’t have any margin of error to do so I decided

1 To solve subjects like SOM, STRUCTURE, RCC and paper 2 FLUID, ENVIRO, SOIL up-to that point till I mastered them and commit zero mistake, I was able to do it after solving these subjects 16–18 times and at the end I was able to solve previous year papers of these subjects in just 3 days,at the end answers were remembered by me along with question and year in which it was asked.I filled 5 rims of A 4 sheets and each rim has 500 pages so 2500 pages from span of (JANUARY till JUNE).

2 I gave two test series on two consecutive days I. E Saturday (5–8) evening of ACE ACADEMY and Sunday (10–1) ies master, it's nearly impossible to manage the load of two conventional test series simultaneously but I needed success at any cost and I had no way to escape except to fight ruthlessly, what I eat When I eat I didn't remember anything during this time of my mains.I didn't go to give BARC exam even as I forgot its date that was my involvement for ESE.

3 In mains as I have filled center in Chandigarh so I thought that I shall take out the money required for me and my father to go to Chandigarh, to stay and then come back to Delhi by topping in test series conducted by these coachings and the end I managed to win 8000 rs which removed a lot of burden from my father because in summer (May June) our coaching remains close and mains was on 2 July so we had to leave for Chandigarh on 30 June. So in order to do this I started to write my original name. Here are few of those results

U can see my marks, I was not a topper in all tests but my rank in ace was normally in top 10 and in iesm top 30,I would have easily in top 10 in most of the tests if I would have given single test but my final rank would not have been that great since on giving two test series even though your rank may somewhat go back but your are able to gain more confidence and verstality of questions but it is quite difficult to manage and needs a huge amount of efforts but if you will do this trust me U will never get setbacks in final result ,I know few students who are continuously toppers in a single test series from past 2 years but are unable to convert it into real upsc rank. It is advisable to join two test series in mains as per my opinion.

I was confident this time and have given nearly 32 conventional tests before giving my actual exam on 2 July

Attempted 244 in P1 got 218, did slight mistake in last question of collapse load computation in last step and answer was coming from combined mechanism but I did a slight mistake in that and lost nearly 10 marks, this was the only mistake I did in whole paper of questions which I attempted. This year's paper 1 and 2 both were very different from last year as I remember in paper 1 few questions were ambiguous and your answer may change if U take some other data since in order to avoid this ambiguity I solved these questions by both ways (shaft wala) so that examiner can not cut marks in any way if this wouldn't have been case I would have secured 20 marks more since my valuable time was wasted in solving these questions 2 times by different methods but it UPSC U can't do anything.

For P2 I attempted 275 but here again ambiguity was there, single layer design did by triaxial as well as burmister by assuming F=1 ,here I attempted a slight mistake of not solving one question of single layer or double layer of consolidation by both the methods, I solved by considering single drainage and clearly wrote down the reason for such assumption but I should have also solved that by double drainage I would have easily scored 20 more marks in p2 ,instead of writing justification I should have solved it by taking case 2 and proceeding, so if you feel any ambiguity in any question solve by both methods and they will give marks according to their solution. My score in p2 is 191 .but it could have been easily 211.

Interview

After giving mains and matching with ace key I was confident that now our hardships are over and told my father to buy a TV as well as have their proper health check up but he said try to top in exam from that day after seeing your name in final result our whole hardships will vanish.

I prepared for interview whole heatedly and saw nptel lectures for more conceptual clearity and gave my 100 percent (although interview was immaterial for me even if I have got 100 marks out of 200 my rank would have been in top 10,as I have decided previously I shall not allow upsc to let my mother weep again and scored 694 in written inspite of loosing 30–40 marks due to ambiguity in questions itself and those 40 marks depended on what assumption one made and whether that matched with upsc or not, but those marks were not in my fate.

Two very interesting scenarios happened with me just before my interview

1 My interview was on 19th September, my father loves to sit among educated people and is fond of good and quality education so he was quite happy to visit UPSC, he was scheduled to come on 16th September, his train was scheduled to arrive ANAND VIHAR at 4:30 pm, I called him and he said he is about to reach, I was revising my nptel made notes at that time so I again started to study but after one hour he didn't reach to my room, I called him his mobile was switched off, I again called same situation, I kept on calling for next 1 hour and repeatedly got the same reply, now it was already 2 hours since train deported him at ANVT and it hardly used to take 1 hour to reach at my room from ANVT, half an hour passed more, now I was worried that what has happened and was going to call to ANVT station and about to leave for searching him but as I was coming down HE was coming upstairs, I felt quite relaxed and asked why his mobile was switched off, he was himself surprised and said I haven't switched off my mobile and when I saw that it was really not switched off, in fact BSNL SIM doesn't operates well in some parts of DELHI that was the reason for it.

2 I studied till 18th September evening and after that decided to end the game.I was about to go outside to have shaving and take a photo copy of required documents, following two documents are required during your interview if you are from GENERAL CATEGORY

HIGH SCHOOL PASSING CERTIFICATE INCLUDING YOUR DATE OF BIRTH

YOUR ORIGINAL DEGREE CERTIFICATE (PROVISIONAL CAN WORK BUT YOU HAVE TO PRODUCE ORIGINAL AFTERWARDS)

So in order to facilitate all this I kept these documents in some other bag and told everyone at my house about it, but at the main time due to so much work load my father forgot to bring these documents somehow, when I asked for these my father started to look into his bag but these were not there, now as these are the two necessary documents required for verification at UPSC I had none, it was 9:30 pm and tomorrow my interview was going to happen at 10 am, only solution was that some person bring that manually, My father asked one of his students to do it, he said OK SIR I SHALL COME, now I said one of my friend to have a flight ticket earliest for that boy and luckily there was only one seat remaining in the flight that was to be flown from LUCKNOW TO DELHI next morning at 6:30 am, if I would have been missed even by 5 minutes that ticket would have been booked, he reached Lucknow from my home by booking a cab and then to DELHI, here is the picture of that gentlemen ,the boy standing on right, left is my father, see these people who belong from such small place but how much helping they are, he travelled 800 km when he was tired working in his field whole day just in a hope that one of my brother is going to achieve something great so I should help him at any cost.

FEW DAYS BEFORE RESULT DECLARATION

It was DIWALI and I was at home after so long, as I knew that I shall be among toppers but my parents were afraid that anything can happen, so we didn't celebrate DIWALI with that much enthusiasm because the biggest DIWALI gift was yet to be given by UPSC.

9 NOVEMBER

One of my friend called me and said result aa gaya now my mother was shaking due to fear ,similar was the condition of my father ,He messaged me about my rank, I hold my breath and said nothing for few seconds, my mother thaught that something happened again as last year she started to get faint suddenly I spoke AIR 8,and bowed my head into feat of my parents. It appeared that they got new life and from that day till today and I suppose for forever whole atmosphere has changed, those people who used to taunt us now bow in front of my parents, every where we are respected and everything can't be written hear U just crack these exams and then feel, no amount of money can give me that amount of pleasure and satisfaction to me which I have achieved now, if I would have not taken this path I suppose a great void would have remained in my life, now we are fully satisfied and happy people, our house may remain damaged but if your inner house I. E your soul remains satisfied then it doesn't matter in which house you are living, an internal satisfaction is an eternal bliss and that can be achieved only by your hard work and living with full dedication.

Always remember A HARD EARNED MONEY AND WORSHIP WITH FULL DEVOTION NEVER GOES IN VAIN IT HAS SOME MAJESTIC POWER WHICH ONLY FEW PEOPLE CAN REALIZE.

After declaration of my result so many people use to come at our home see some snaps.

MY PARENTS

Me and my father sat first time in flight and it will now be usual affair for us I suppose.

THE PERSON WEARING RED JACKET IS MLA OF MY REGION AND A CABINET MINISTER IN UP GOVT.

AND THEN ONE WITH GURUDEV

Also see some n ews paper clippings

I can't upload each and every image there are so many of them, just remain motivated and always remember no one can stop U except you yourself, as your prelims is over now if you are getting through in mains it's excellent give your best and if are unable to do so work hard again because if I would have gave up at any stage then today I would have not been writing such answer......

- Vijaya Nandan Pandey, IES

Don’t fall for investment gimmicks, FDs, stocks and mutual funds are NOT the best investments

Don’t fall for investment gimmicks, FDs, stocks and mutual funds are NOT the best investments, they provide you the least returns.

The best returns you get is when you invest in yourself, i.e your health, education, self-improvement etc.

Lets take an example to understand.

Lets assume you have a budget of INR 4,000 every month, or an annual budget of INR 48,000.

You have two choices, either you can invest in stocks, FD or mutual funds or you can invest on yourself, in terms of health or getting a new skill or certification.

Lets analyse both scenarios:

1. Investing in an FD:

As you may see, upon investing in a FD after investing 48,000 you will get a mere annual return of just INR 3,247.

2. Investing in mutual funds:

Let’s assume you invest the same sum of INR 48,000 in a mutual fund for 3 years. Lets also assume the ROI to be 15%.

This is what you get:

A mere return of INR 25,000 after investing for 3 Years! That translates to less than INR 9,000 every year.

Now lets take the alternate route, lets invest in ourselves:

1. Health:

Lets say you pay INR 1,000 for a gym membership every month and spend another INR 3,000 on a decent diet. You do this for a year.

Although the direct monetary benefits you would get form this would be zero but there are tons of indirect benefits to it.

You would feel much happier and light.

You would be more productive with your work.

You would significantly reduce the risk of getting diabetes when you get older.

Would you prefer getting the above benefits or would you invest 48,000 to just get a mere return of around INR 3,500 annually?

2. Education:

With 48,000 to invest you can get some technical certifications related to your domain which may get you a new job. If you currently work somewhere, such certifications can even get your promoted and get you a higher salary. With such amount you can buy almost every good book from your domain.

Assuming you are currently a student with no marketable skills and getting a certification gave you a job which pays you INR 3,00,000 annually, that’s a whopping return of 625%.

Assuming you are a working employee and currently make INR 6,00,000 annually, even if the certification helped you get a better job with 30% hike, that is a return of 1.8 Lacs annually. Which is a return of 375%.

3. Equipment which enhances productivity:

Assuming you are a freelancer and if you work with computers, upgrading your equipment can be your best bet. Like for example, using dual monitors can improve your productivity by 20–30%. A average person can save up to 1.5 hours every day.

If a freelancer charges $10 an hour, that translates to $15 a day or 200 working days X $15 = $3,000 a year or INR 2 lacs annually on a monitor that costs just 15,000.

Conclusion:

While these were just mere examples, there are a lot of ways you can get the most return for your investment by investing into your own self.

Stocks, bonds and FDs are great but they are good to invest the surplus amount. If you have lots of money lying around then you may surely invest in them.

You should prioritize investing in yourself first to get the maximum return before directly jumping into stocks, FD or MFs.

This advice specifically applies to young people as they have less capital to work with and yet can invest in things like health,education and experiences which might prove a lot more beneficial in the long run.

When you invest in yourself, you grow. When you invest in FDs,MFs the corporate companies grow and they just pay you the bare minimum.

Hence its up to you to decide who’s growth you want to invest into. 

-Saurav Sharma

The biggest realisation I had about life is:

 

“Life is what you make of it”.

There are people in this world who think life is hard, and guess what? Life will always be hard to them

There are some people who think life is full of opportunities, guess what? They will have most opportunities in their life.

Some people believe that life is unfair, and co-incidentally life can will be unfair to them.

While this might not sound logical but it actually is, and the reason for this is a lot of how your life will be greatly depends on your perspective.

You can have all the wealth and power in this world, but if your perspective of looking at your life is like “Man! I have all this but yet im not happy and I feel miserable” in that case you will be miserable no matter the amount of wealth or power you have.

On the contrary, if you are a person who is currently struggling in his/her life but if you have the perspective and attitude of a warrior and you think like “Yes, time is not in my favour and nothing is going well, I am in terrible circumstances but guess what? I am a strong person and I have the power and the will to get out of it”. Guess what, if you have such attitude you will eventually get out of it sooner or later and emerge as a much stronger person.

Let’s take an example which you might relate to:

Let’s say you are preparing for an exam, or a job interview.

There are two ways you can approach them.

Approach 1:

You can either say, I hate studying, its so boring and I hate prepping for exams/interview however I will force myself to do it and get it done ASAP so that I can later engage in more fun activities like hanging out with my friends.

Approach 2:

Or, you may take an alternative path like “Man! this material seems so interesting, I can get to learn new things, I cant wait to get my hands on that book.”

Different approaches give different results.

The guy who follows the first approach will not only score less or fail at the interview, but the whole process of studying will leave him frustrated.

On the contrary, the guy who chooses the 2nd approach will not only enjoy his work, but he will also ace his exam/interview and there is no chance of getting frustrated doing something you love.

This applies to almost everything in your life, be it work, academics, relationships etc.

The kind of outlook, attitude and perspective you have towards life will determine the kind of life you will eventually have

-Saurav Sharma

Do these 5 Things before 30

 

1. Marry and have a child with a disastrous choice of partner; you will be bound to them for the rest of your life via the child and will pay dearly for this mistake.
2. Settle into a job/career that isn’t satisfying and locks-in a dependence on the money from that job.
3. Spend all the money made and fail to invest in something like a house or shares; the compounding effect is such a powerful goldmine you’ll fail to exploit and money will always need to be earnt without leverage.
4. Tolerate bad treatment from boy/girlfriends friends…it trains you into what you’ll tolerate and resent for the rest of your life.
5. Focus on meeting outward demands instead of cultivating character through education, introspection, therapy, and personal development; ignorance of your inner motivations leaves you a slave to the training you got as a child which is geared toward satisfying others instead of empowering and fulfilling yourself.

Yes, engineering from Tier 3 college is a waste of Time, Money and emotion, if....

 Yes, engineering from Tier 3 college is a waste of Time, Money and emotion, if you are someone who loves to stay in your super comfort zone! If you are someone who does not believe in working hard and waste your time in college(4 years) doing nothing and expecting something great to happen someday! It might sound harsh but this is the reality of most of the Tier 3 colleges in India.

No, engineering from Tier 3 college is not a waste of time, if You are a self-learner and highly motivated person to achieve something. If you wish to work hard and don't sit back for the Training and Placement Cell to do a miracle for you.If you have the courage to go through the depressing phase or rather the most challenging phase of life(when you are searching for an off-campus Job or internship). I understand that getting a job or internship in a great firm is not that simple but yes it's not impossible as well. This might sound funny for some of you but its the truth. I am from Kalyani Government Engineering College(State Government Engineering College). I know the situation of tier 3 Colleges very well. Because of the lack of motivation and culture in the college people often tends to lose the motivation they had before joining the college. There are many alumni from my college working in Tier 1 Companies(Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, Qualcomm, and others) and there are alumni from my college working in service-based companies and then there are many who are jobless. Thus you can conclude that it is not the college but the People what actually matters. So it is up to you how you utilize your time in college. It's easy to find an excuse and keep crying but difficult to actually work hard to get something you dream of!

-Komal Singh

Government Job Preparation

What is one thing that you learned about life?

It is easy to succeed.

Yes it is.

There is a logic behind this statement:

90% of people do not give their best. They either show off or waste time in complaining or give fake assurance to self that they are doing their best.

So here is a trick -

If you want to be successful at something, please understand that you are competing with only 10% of people.

Don't be scared looking at other 90% because these are the people who are there because:

1.Their parents, friends or colleagues told them to try for It

2.They are over confident

3.They are a part of little work, little play and all show off

4.They are too stubborn to change their opinions

5.They don't know what they are doing

6.They are the ones who begin at rocket pace but soon adopt turtle pace.

7.They don't want to succeed as hard as they are pretending they want to succeed

8.They are busy doing multitasking

9.They suffer from superiority complex

10.They are busy doing comparisons

11.They have only one goal - to earn money

12.They change their goals too easily

13.They don't work silently rather they work to prove their worth

14.They are insecure about everything

15.They interfere in other people's business

16.They are not consistent with their work

17.They give up easily

So If you are preparing for world's toughest exam or be an astronaut or the next Einstein or A. R.Rahman - get this in your head that you have to compete with only 10% of people.

And if you are doing anything or all from above mentioned 17 pointers - please accept the fact that you are also a part of 90%.

Kruti Naik

How do top students study?

I'll speak on behalf of a close friend of mine, who attended an unknown university from where I am from (Lima, Peru), and got accepted for a fully funded PhD to work with the world-leaders (including Nobel Laureates) at Systems Biology and Computational Biology at Harvard, UC San Francisco and Rockefeller.

I'd like to add, that he beat his competitors at interviewing for Grad School from MIT, Harvard, Caltech, Stanford, Yale, and other top institutions. It's one thing to go to get a PhD at MIT because you did your undergrad at Caltech, but its a completely different story if a kid from a developing country who went to a no-mans-land university beats you at grad school and got to work with a Nobel Laureate. This guy was the deal, and he went from zero to hero.

His success story:

1) Discipline: He had no Facebook during his undergraduate years, and probably only went online for doing homework, assignments or coordinating projects. This reduced his distraction span to zero.

2) Emotional Intelligence: He could control his emotional and sexual impulses. He was very socially intelligent around diverse groups, but he had in mind that having a girlfriend during his undergraduate years would be a major distraction. Both he and I when we were freshman knew that we wanted to go to USA for a PhD, so we were lifelong buddies who always noticed the good and bad things about each other. While I would sometime complain that he didn't go out on weekends (because he never did), he would always complain that I cared too much about appearance, partying and personal marketing. He was not socially handicapped as some people might think a 'nerd' would be, he was actually a very mature person who could talk about anything.

3) Sacrifice: We came from a place where dogs literally walked inside our classroom, and cockroaches would on occasion crawl in our backpack in class. He didn't let any of this get to him. He actually used the poor infrastructure of our engineering building as a motivation, something like "one day I'm going to get out of this hell hole, and do something great for science". He also had a great sense of patriotism.

4) Stellar passion and motivation: The first semester, I found out that he had the highest GPA of the whole class, and I immediately called him by the phone. I didn't understand a thing of what he said because the signal was low. However, the next day he seemed very depressed and told me that his grandfather had passed away. His grandfather was like his father to him and he never got the chance to tell him that he achieved first place in his engineering class. Little did we know, after a couple of weeks we realized not only was he the first in class, he was first in the entire campus achieving the highest GPA (grades in Peru are from 0 to 20, and with no curve). He graduated Summa Cum Laude 2 years ago, and got the highest GPA at our university over the last 30 years. The other person previous to him was Barton Zwiebach, a renowned Peruvian string theorist and Professor at MIT.

5) No pain, no gain: He went overkill sometimes to achieve his goal. I'm talking things like not having lunch to study an extra hour, sleep 4-5 hours a day at least 5 days a week, sleeping on the bus to get extra sleep time, and most dazzling thing of all was that most of the time he didn't go to class. He just stayed studying in the library and was at least 2 or 3 weeks ahead of the professor. Even if he did go to class, he rarely paid attention, he would go over his books to see what methods other authors would teach. He would buy and download at least 5 different books per subject and read them all to learn and to study for the test. He would go over all the proofs and learn them, study them, do them, sometimes reinvent the proofs or see if he could grasp the concept in anticipation of what the book would reveal.

6) Selecting friends: His paradigm for selecting friends (or colleagues) was impressive. He didn't care if it was me (a spoiled rich kid), or the son of a blue-collar family that was a national math Olympiad. He valued people for their ideas and it didn't matter to him where they were from, but where they were going.

7) Becoming a preacher: He was never reluctant on teaching. Whenever anyone would ask him something he would go over the concepts and explain it to him. This was really beneficial for our closed group of friends, as we each learned different concepts and he checked with us or we discussed any doubts we had.

8) Be ambitious: All of his life, he was the best at everything he did. Before enrolling at our engineering school, he was making around $3000 a month by only winning Magic The Gathering Card competitions, and he was Peru's #1 player and Ranked in the top 10 world wide. *Not bad for a 16 year old, at that time.

9) He majored in Robotics Engineering: So yes, he did learn Optimal and Digital Control, Fourier Analysis, Triple integrals, differential equations, etc.. We didn't have computers for our programming tests, they were all done on pen and paper.

10) He was incredibly humble.

He started graduate school at 22

-Arturo Deza,Robot Ophthalmologist

What advice can you give me before starting my UPSC preparation?

 I usually avoid giving advice since generic ‘gyaan’ is not of much use, and I rarely have specific and useful things to say.

However, since you have asked this question, here is what comes to my mind:

1. Remember that the odds of getting into a top Civil Service (IAS/IPS/IFS) are probably 200–300 out of 10 lacs. While we all talk about the big successes, there are 100 times more candidates who don’t make it despite being very capable and working very hard.
1. In my own batch at IIT there was a guy much smarter than me, who was academically brilliant. He never made it even to the interview stage, if I remember correctly.
2. It does not mean that you can’t beat the odds but keep that perspective and know what you are up against.
2. Decide how many years you want to give to the exam. Even though many people have spent 3–5 years, I am reluctant to suggest that one should spend that much time. Give it a year or two, and then give it your best shot.
3. If you are writing the exam, go all out, day and night. It should be a total war, not a skirmish. You should be able to put in 10–12 hrs a day with intense focus, if not more. Though I am talking about number of hours, remember that the quality of effort is more important.
4. Hard work is not enough - you need to know how to prepare the fastest for each topic/subject. In our days at IIT Kanpur, we used to get very good info about which topic to prepare from which book from previous year’s candidates. IITK used to produce many toppers and they had figured out a lot of things over time. It made the preparation very efficient. I suspect it must be much easier now due to organized coaching etc.
5. It is a long exhausting journey. Unless you are personally super-motivated, don’t do it due to social or family pressure. At some point the only thing that will drive you is the fire burning inside you.

I will skip any specific advice on which subject to take or which study material to use. I am sure there are people much better qualified than me to do that.

All I can say is that nothing is easy, but everything is doable. Good luck.

-Rajan Singh

Sleep or Success?

My cousin and his father own a big brand of apparels—they own several showrooms, and mills.

I have never seen both of them wake up before ten am unless they have a flight to catch.

I think it's in their genes to sleep till late.

Instead of sleeping for four hours, they use their mind and manage their business well in six to seven hours a day.

My brother won't wake up at one pm if you don't force him. He cleared Bank PO, SSC (twice), ONGC, and some other papers. He didn't fail in any competitive exam he gave. Also, he was the topper of his school.

I don't know why people form this misconception about sleep and ruin their life.

Sleep is one of the most critical aspects of our life.

Without sleep, there is no strength, no intelligence, no wisdom and no joy.

Sleeplessness causes anxiety, depression, stress, drowsiness, weakness, and slows down your mind.

Sleep makes your body relaxed and improves your productivity.

After a good sleep, you understand things with clarity and faster.

Answering this question-

I completely disagree with the hypothesis that successful people sleep less, leave aside four hours.

(And please don't quote one person out of one million people)

I pray to everyone reading this, don't destroy your sleep in the hope of doing something big in life.

Instead, use the remaining time productively without procrastinating.

-Anubhav Jain

Relationship

 You are going to meet him. You are tired, still the thought of eating dinner with him cheers you up. You can’t wait to share how good the day had been. You also want to discuss about your career plan with him. You know he might be hesistant. It makes you nervous. But you are somewhat confident that you can convince him.

This is the example of a good relationship.

You are going to meet him. You feel scared. You strongly pray that he is in a good, understanding mood and dinner should end on a happy and peaceful note at least this time.

This is the example of a toxic relationship.

A healthy relationship is another source of your happiness. The person forms your support. It might not give you happiness or peace always but it gives you strength to sail through difficult times.

Toxic relationship is the sink for happiness you obtain from other sources. It makes you very weak and vulnerable. Most of your time goes in searching for happiness bubles on the surface of the ocean of bitterness with flimsier hopes.

---

So

The best way to check if the relationship works for you or not is to

Monitor how you mind and body feels when you are with your partner.

If you feel nervous, scared, uncomfortable or traumatic, it is high time you need to consider whether you want to go ahead with the relationship or not

If someone claims to love you, but walks away and ghosts you, I think one or more of the following applies:

1. They do not actually love you.
2. They use the word “love” too loosely.
3. They mistake shallow, positive feelings that they feel for a short time for love.
4. They wanted to have sex with you and described that to you as love.
5. They have a personality disorder and “split” —shifted from seeing you as all-good to all-bad—because something you said or did triggered them.
6. They lied when they said they loved you and knew they were lying.
7. They told you they loved you in response to you saying it to them and they felt obligated to say it back in return.

Punchline: Unfortunately, the word “love” is used for many different things. People say that they love ice cream, a particular book, the way a haircut looks, and their spouse. If someone says “I love you” and is able to walk away and ghost you, whatever they meant by love is different than the deep, stable, caring positive feelings that most people seek from a mate.

Elinor Greenberg, PhD, CGP

In private practice and the author of the book: Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptations.

www.elinorgreenberg.com